Tips
Pay to win Hearthstone is essentially a pay to win game, but not strongly so. If you can afford to buy adventures or card packs, do it. You'll get to play with a bigger variety of cards, have more heroes with winning decks, and possibly win more matches based on intimidation (Legendary cards are very intimidating), if nothing else. The more cards you can buy, the more you can disenchant which opens up many crafting options. Leveling and XP * Levels and XP are the enemy. ** Levels occasionally give you a good card, but also make your opponents tougher and more experienced. Other than that being higher level is no advantage. ** XP gives you literally nothing except increase the possibility of getting to a higher level which you don't want. The longer you play a match, you'll get more XP whether you win or lose. * Recognize a bad draw and quit fast. ** You quickly get to know if the first cards you get are going to help you win or just slow you down. You might be wrong sometimes, but except for the Arena, there is almost no penalty for losing. ** If you get a bad draw, quit fast. The faster you quit, the less XP you'll get which is what you want. ** The other advantage to quitting fast is that it takes less time. The worst match in the game is the one where you play for a long time and still lose. This wastes lots of time, you lose, and you get more XP. Quests, Tavern Brawl, and 3 crowns * Try to only play classes that will help you with quests when possible. ** Most quests are based on winning matches, so if you get a crown and a quest win, you're not wasting matches. * Only play Tavern Brawl until you get one win, unless it will help you with a quest. ** Tavern Brawl is fun, but after the first win (for which you earn a basic card pack), it is often just a waste of time. ** Tavern Brawl appears to do bad matching for crowns. It appears that the chances of getting a crown are much lower in Tavern Brawl, possibly because Blizzard wants to loosen the matching so lower level players can play a higher level player that they normally might not match up with. * If you can get 3 crowns for 10 gold while completing quests, you're increasing your efficiency. Adventures vs. Arena * Although Arena guarantees at least one pack, it is still subject to RNG (random number generator) and after only a 4 or 5 rounds of 3 losses you will often get the same cards you already have without getting many good rates or better. ** Play the Arena early on to fill hour your collection, but if you see you're getting few good cards or lots of duplicates, you might want to save up gold for Adventures. ** Quitting fast still applies to the Arena, if you get unlucky or face several good players. Better to get your pack than waste time trying to win an extra match that won't necessarily net good cards. ** The Arena is not as fair as it seems. Pay to win players will have more good cards in their collections and Arena appears to increase the chances of Epics or Legendaries showing up in the random selection, if you have more. These cards can totally imbalance matches, so you will notice early on that your opponent might be throwing down far more Legendaries than you ever see. * Adventures aren't that hard. Most of the bosses can be beaten with basic cards plus a few expert or rare+ cards. ** The advantage of Adventures, even if they cost the equivalent of 5 Arena rounds, is that good cards are mostly guaranteed. You know what cards you're going to get as you advance and complete wings and you should get a few extra good cards alone the way as you level and complete wings. ** Unless the adventure just got released, lots of obtainable deck lists and solid strategies are available on the web. Forum threads * Tips on Druid Removal and Synergy Notes * These tips are not based on tons of experience and are mostly anecdotal, but if you see something wrong, FIX IT! * You can still do quite well without spending any real world money, but it will definitely take longer to get up to speed, especially for ranked play. Category:Browse Category:Strategy